The Making of “Zen”

Maximum Compute Efficiency

The “Zen” core is an all-new “clean sheet” x86 processor design that’s inspiring a new generation of high-performance AMD computing products in 2017 and beyond. “Zen” combines the latest thinking in high-throughput and low-power design methodologies to create a balanced and versatile architecture right at home in the desktop, laptop, datacenter and supercomputer.

Performance and Efficiency for Next-​Gen Applications

Cloud computing, enterprise productivity, immersive visual experiences, gaming and data security open up new frontiers – and demand more computing performance with maximum energy efficiency. From the very beginning, AMD engineers designed the new “Zen” core to meet those demands with a high-performance execution engine, large caches, and powerful multi-threading capabilities.

“Zen” Microarchitecture Details

“Zen” cores are designed to efficiently use available microarchitectural resources for optimal compute performance. Compared to our previous architecture, three-tier cache system and new pre-fetch algorithms enable dramatically higher throughput in the cache and execution engines.